


Things That Were, Things That Are

by ladivvinatravestia



Series: I Scry [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Antisemitism, Folklore & Mythology, Gen, Pre-War, no beta we die like men, period-typical heteronormativity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 07:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21032861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: Teen Steve and Bucky attempt scrying, with mixed results.





	Things That Were, Things That Are

**Author's Note:**

> For whumptober prompt "shackled" and spooktober prompts "sharp" and "Friday the 13th".
> 
> Additional warnings: The neighbor lady who is supposed to be looking after Steve and Bucky decides to blame the boys' scrying adventure on Bucky being Jewish (practicing magic or witchcraft is an accusation that has frequently been made against Jews). I'm not Jewish and I know way more about Catholic attitudes towards Jews in Renaissance Florence than in inter-war New York, but I've done my best. As far as I have been able to determine, the scrying spell that the boys attempt here originates in the British Isles.

As the clock ticks closer to midnight, Steve and Bucky move around the apartment, getting everything into place. A candle from the emergency stores under the kitchen sink. The mirror from Steve's ma's vanity set, the one she got from her own Gran and brought over from Ireland. A second, smaller mirror, that Bucky "borrowed" from his sisters. After much heated discussion about an appropriate sharp object to use, Bucky's switchblade. Mrs. Gallagher from next door is supposed to be looking in on them, so they've done all their preparations in the dark, hoping to give off the impression that they're innocently sound asleep.

Bucky has his doubts about whether any of this is even going to work - he's not that much of a believer in the supernatural - but it seemed like something fun and spooky they could do on Friday the 13th. A bunch of the girls from school had done it a couple weeks ago, and while most of them claimed they didn't see anything, Meg Donnelly swore she saw Mikey Reilly's face in the mirror and now they're keeping company. So.

Maybe Bucky will see the face of the girl he's supposed to marry. It would be nice to get some guidance in that direction. The girls at school are all pretty enough, and Doris even asked to borrow his _Weird Tales_ last month, but he still has trouble picturing himself spending the rest of his life with one of them instead of with Steve.

Steve sits in front of the larger mirror, making sure that all of the other materials are in easy reaching distance. Bucky has a sudden thought. "Who's going to go first?" he asks.

Steve frowns, thinking. "You go first, right at midnight, and then I'll go afterwards. I'm thirteen, so that should make up for me not going at midnight," he says.

"But the girls said it had to be done at midnight," Bucky counters.

"What, you think they all went at once?" Steve asks. They look at each other in the darkness.

"Maybe?" says Bucky. Steve looks doubtful, so Bucky says, "After all, we're going to live next to each other once we're married anyway, so we might as well both find out who each other are going to marry."

Steve thinks this through. "Okay," he says.

Bucky strikes a match to light the candle and then he and Steve are shuffling closer together so they can both look in the larger mirror, propped against a table leg. Steve calmly pricks the tip of his finger with the switchblade and dots a little of his blood onto each of the mirrors, then lets a drop drip into the candle flame. Bucky thought he would be able to do the same, but when he hesitates, Steve says,

"You want me to do it?"

"Uh, yeah," says Bucky, feeling a little silly. He's the bigger, tougher one. Why should he be the one afraid of using a knife? But Steve takes Bucky's hand gently in one of his own and presses the point into the pad of one of his fingers. It barely even hurts. Bucky pulls his hand away quickly before he can think too much about how nice it felt having Steve hold his hand, and repeats the process of blood dripping that Steve had done. He's taller than Steve and his arms are longer, so he holds out the smaller mirror behind them, angling it until the two mirrors can be seen in each other's reflections.

"Now what?" he asks, whispering. He can't see anything but an infinity of Steves and Buckys, reflecting off in both directions.

"I think we sort of - stare at the reflection of the candle flame, and let our eyes go unfocussed - " says Steve, then trails off.

Bucky tries to follow the directions. He narrows his eyes at the infinite reflections, trying to see if there's any change. There are so many reflected Steves and Buckys that the images start to lose meaning and form. Is that - ? Do they look a little different now? Is that them as grown men? Is that Steve just as big and broad as Bucky? But Bucky's supposed to be seeing his future love in the mirror, not just his best friend.

The door flings open, banging against the wall, and the lights flick on, causing Bucky to blink rapidly and drop the mirror.

"What the devil do you boys think you're doing?" demands Mrs. Gallagher, hands on her hips. She's in curling papers and a quilted house coat, and she strides over to them to pinch the candle out.

"We were just - " begins Bucky.

"Witchcraft," tuts Mrs. Gallagher, giving Bucky an appraising and not-very-friendly eye.

Steve hasn't said anything, or moved, and now Bucky notices he's still staring, trancelike, at the mirror.

"Steven Grant!" snaps Mrs. Gallagher, and Steve snaps suddenly out of it, blinking and gasping.

Bucky puts his arm protectively around Steve's skinny shoulders, and Steve grabs onto him and clings, as if for dear life. There are tears in his eyes. Bucky glares up at Mrs. Gallagher.

"You best assume your Ma will be hearing about this in the morning," she says, and stalks off. Bucky thinks he hears her muttering something about him undermining Steve's moral fibre, which is grossly unfair, especially since the whole thing was Steve's idea.

~~

Afterwards, Steve and Bucky don't talk about what they saw, or didn't see, in the mirror. Steve overhears Mrs. Gallagher telling his Ma her side of the story, which is, predictably, all about how "that terrible Barnes boy" is leading "poor sweet Stevie" astray and how Mrs. Gallagher doesn't understand why his Ma lets him be friends with "that sort of boy" at all. Steve's Ma is curtly polite to her, but afterwards tells Steve that she thinks he and Bucky are now old enough to look after themselves overnight while she has to work.

"Thanks, Ma," says Steve. "I don't like how she's always looking to blame him for things."

"Nor do I," agrees his Ma. She pours herself a cup of tea, and another for Steve, and then sits down at the table across from him. "Now, did you see anything you want to talk about?" she says.

Steve opens and closes his mouth. Why would she think he saw anything at all? But she didn't ask him if he saw anything, just if he wants to talk about it. "No, Ma," he says.

"Having the Sight is - not always a blessing," his Ma says. "I'm here if you change your mind."

She goes to bed and Steve tries to bury himself in a book, but there's a lot to think about. He honestly hadn't thought the mirror scrying spell would do anything, except be a bit of spooky fun. He had, maybe, thought that Mrs. Gallagher might try to interrupt them, though given it had been a spell he heard about from the other Catholic children at school he had foolishly assumed she wouldn't try to make it about Bucky's faith. He certainly hadn't expected his Ma to tacitly admit that visions might occur, or have real predictive power. Is he going to have more visions? Because if they're going to be anything like the one he had last night, he doesn't want any more at all.

Steve never has another vision quite like the one he had that night, and if people want to attribute his accuracy in battle and his ability to anticipate and counter enemy plans to the serum, he's happy to pretend that's all that accounts for his unusual abilities. And while Bucky, laughing, tells him on their wedding night about what he saw in the mirror on that night so many years ago, Steve never tells Bucky what he saw. It's been the only vision he had that he hadn't been able to prevent coming true: Bucky, beaten and led away in shackles, helpless to escape or even to cry out for help.

**Author's Note:**

> Visit me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ladivvinatravestia), where my asks box is always open to prompts.


End file.
